Resilient pads have been used to protect vehicle occupants from violent contact with the interior structure of the vehicle. Air bags have become quite common as a means of protecting front-seat occupants in a head-on collision. These offer significant protection from injury caused by contact with the windshield, the dashboard structure, and the steering wheel. Broadside and roll-over accidents, however, subject the occupants to significant danger from contact with the body pillars, the roof structure, and the door headers, and these have not been provided with significant protection for various reasons. Pads of sponge rubber, or some structurally equivalent material, have occasionally been used over some of these hard and rigid surfaces, but space requirements in the vehicle prevent the use of thick enough pads of such material to seriously reduce the risk of injury in an accident. Another problem with cushioning materials is the tendency to retain the energy of impact deformation, and thus cause a rebound effect as the vehicle occupant is thrown back into a secondary impact against some other surface. Ideally, the impact energy should be dissipated somehow, so that the forces generated by the return of the pad to its un-deformed condition are substantially less than those previously causing the deformation.
These functional requirements are somewhat complicated by the practical necessity of having the pad easily attachable to the vehicle structure, and provide an appearance consistent with the interior decor. These latter requirements can usually be satisfied by the use of molded materials having selected colors and surface configuration.